


Melody (A rewrite)

by FairyTri



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga), Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alchemy, Depression, Envy has questionable parenting skills but their kids wound up ok i guess, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, Multi, PTSD, Rating May Change, Relationship Problems, Rewrite, Sad with a Happy Ending, They/Them Pronouns for Envy (Fullmetal Alchemist), Warnings May Change, but it works out I promise, i will strangle cringe culture with my own two hands, original is on quotev, the mom is dead its very sad, we're gonna pretend that i know how alchemy works
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2020-08-20 06:17:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20223199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairyTri/pseuds/FairyTri
Summary: A crucial chess piece in Father's game goes missing. More accurately she ran away. Its quite a few years later and the search is on.A rewrite of my very first fanfiction that im writing because cringe culture is dead and i like the concept i came up with. Now with less talking swords and more ptsd!





	1. Chapter 1

_December 1, 2003 _

_ I don't think most of them ever loved me. I known Lust didn't. To her I was just a means to an end. A tool for the overall mission to be used at Father's discretion. I was too human for her to even like. Barely enough like them for her to tolerate. Gluttony didn't care either way, but he idolized Lust to the point he followed her lead regarding me. Pride hated my humanity too. Always poking and prodding. Always acting superior. Always acting like I was the most freakish twist to their Father's plans. Those three weren't very good for my self esteem growing up._

_ Sloth didn't care in the slightest, not even enough the be repulsed like Lust and Pride. It was too much effort to even notice me half the time. That was comforting I guess. He was neutral ground, a place I could go to be completely ignored. It was a nice break, once in a while, to just sit a bit down the tunnels from him and be left alone._

_ Wrath and their Father were the weirdest. They liked to play a game with me. They didn't play with me like I was a friend, like I was someone working with them to have fun. They played with me like I was a doll. A prop in the shallow little family fantasies they were both carrying out. Their Father was the worst of the two. His favorite game was to sit me down, make me call him “Grandfather” and tell me these long, rambling stories. He always framed them like they were supposed to have some grand moral. I still have nightmares about most the stories he told me. Sometimes I wonder if he was really trying to teach me things, or if he didn't care in the slightest about any lessons I might learn. I think he just liked the sound of his own voice. _

_ Wrath was a lot easier. He would just take me and Mom over to his house sometimes, sit us down at the dinner table with his wife, call us his sister and his niece. I never minded those visits. Wrath's wife was nice and there was always dessert. I didn't realize until long after we left that Mom was terrified every time. She was so scared that she would slip up, say something she shouldn't, get both her and wrath's wife killed for revealing something she shouldn't have. I think she was pretty scared of Wrath too. I can understand that. He always seemed ready to snap. _

_ Mom loved me. No question about that. I was her little girl and she adored me like everything was normal. Like I hadn't been shoved into her life in such a fucked up way. I used to think she was crazy for that, but I think I get it now that I'm a mom. I don't think any circumstances could stop me from loving my kid. Mom tried so hard to give me a childhood. She begged and pleaded and convinced for every day in the park, every trip to buy clothes, every semester of school. It was an uphill battle against a psychopath who aimed to become god to get me the space to be a kid, and she managed it. She was amazing like that. _

_ Envy. . .I think Envy loved me too. I've been thinking about it for a while and I'm fairly sure it wasn't an act. Wasn't some ruse to make their Father think that they were happy to play along with his plans. No one could have kept up an act like that for so long. Kept up the act of checking on me when they thought I was asleep. The act of patching up my skinned knees before I started healing like one of them. The act of holding me when my own powers scared me half to death. They let me call them Papa. I think that's all the proof of love I really need from them. I wonder sometimes about how they're doing without me or Mom. Are they taking care of Lilly like they promised? Are they okay? If I saw them again, grown up and not reliant anymore, could I still call them Papa?_

The pen taps silently next to the final question mark, leaving an erratic wreath or ink dots in its wake. The entire house is silent for once, no shout or chatter or crash from the other inhabitence, and the woman writing breathes deeply in the quiet. Its nice, in a way, but suffocating in another. Like something crucial but invisible is missing. The woman cringes at the silence, her face scrunching up as the thinks, desperate, for anything to break the quiet. Anything to make noise to stop the suffocation. The others are sleeping but she craves sound.

She tosses the pen onto her journal and snaps it shut. She shuts the desk-light off with a resounding click and lets the night's darkness flood in through the windows. She stand from her chair and, for a moment, is still; soaking in the awful quiet and the moonlit dark. She wants to scream. She goes to run the dishwasher instead.

I don't know why someone would design a dishwasher in a way that you have to push the start button twice. It seems so silly to add that extra step. Why else would someone push start? To have the dishwasher not go? To make the dishwasher sit silently while we all walk around like idiots who think our dishes are getting cleaned?

My eyes itch as I go on my internal tirade and the dishwasher hums to life. Its a quiet but the noise almost makes me want to cry from relief. I can't stand a silent house nowadays. Its too jarring, when the place is normally full of noise. The darkness beyond the kitchen makes the yellow light glaring and the shadows beyond the doorways all the more deep.

The kitchen clock reads 5:47 and I sigh in defeat. There's not really any point going to sleep not. Not when I'll be up in a few hours. Everybody will be up in a few hours. Merida will wake up first, around the same time as the sun, and will barrel down the stairs for breakfast with that huge grin on her face. She'll try to steal a sip of my coffee and will want to play outside not long after.

Jean-Luc will be up next, coming down the stairs as Merida is starting her breakfast and quietly making his cup of coffee. He never eats much breakfast, but I'll make him a plate anyway and he'll pick at it before going to get ready for work.

Gunta will be up last, she always is, and she'll be a small hurricane with her rush to get ready. Complaining again and again about how late she slept. Someday, I'll make her actually set her alarm instead of letting her insist that she'll “wake up on her own you don't need to nag.” I smile a bit. I know she won't set an alarm, not in a million years, but I'll poke at her about it regardless. She needs someone to do that, just like I need someone to poke and prod for me to go to sleep on time regardless of whether or not I will ever do so. Sleep hasn't come easily to me for years now. Its been days since I slept.

The clock reads 5:58. I need coffee.

Steam grazes my face and the heat of the coffee leaches through the mug into my hands. Its nice to feel that heat. The news chatters away but I'm focusing out the window, watching as the sun crests over the trees. I breath deeply. Everything feels better, now that its day. I hear the beginnings of stirrings upstairs and smile. Everything is always better in the mornings. The night leaves too much quiet. There's nothing for me but to do reminisce and regret. Nothing to do but think.

The coffee is good and there are footsteps on the stairs, quick and light. I smile, setting the cup on the table just in time to catch the small body launching itself into my arms. She is a whirlwind of giggles, she always has been, hugging me close in a morning greeting. I hug her back, gently pushing her sneaking hand away from my coffee cup with a laugh. Her dark hair tickles my nose.

“Morning Sweetie. Did you sleep good?” She thrown herself back, my arms the only thing from keeping her from tumbling off the couch, and signs furiously to describe her dreams. Dramatic ones this morning, full of adventures and daring escapes. I scoop her up, carefully watching her hands so I don't miss a detail of her story.

The sun is shining now, my daughter is awake with the rest of the house to follow, and until the night comes again I don't have to worry about the silence of a sleeping house. I spare a glance at the news as I grab my coffee, plans for breakfast already forming in my head, and frown. Its a strange story, a mass of unexplained killings suspected to be the work of a cereal killer. Some say the work of a god. I turn the TV off. I doubt that the story will concern me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> we meet our secondary protagonist

The first few months were terrible. The losses so fresh they burned at every thought. Two people gone. Taken for two very different reasons, but equally unreachable. Neither knew what to do. Neither knew how to handle the sudden lack. They knew that they only had each other, but beyond that they were lost.  
They were lost, but they adapted. Losses hurt, be it death or something else, but even those wound can heal. They had each other, though they had never been very close, and that was something that the two of them could work with.  
She had lost her whole family in what felt like one fell swoop. Her mother dead and her sister even more unreachable than that. She had no one. No one except them. They were not her parent, they were Melody's “Papa” and they always would be, but they had made a promise to watch her and keep her safe. They didn't break promises to Melody.  
They had each other and over time the two found that it worked well enough.

Three figures trudge through the snow, the only signs of life in the icy stretch between two villages. They can already see their destination, barely visible now but quickly coming closer. Two hang slightly behind their guide, whispering furiously in a private argument.  
“Do you really think this will work?” The taller traveler hisses, pulling her hood more firmly over her ears.  
“Do you have a better plan brat?” The other responds, their hands twitching in a poor restrain from balling into fists.  
“Do you have an answer to my question?”  
They glare at the girl, annoyed with her sass.  
“The Elrics are soft and sentimental.”  
“That's not good enough Envy!”  
They both stop as the girl snatches Envy's arm. They glare at her, eyes that are not truly theirs filled with annoyance. The girl pulls her scarf down, looking the other squarely in the face. Her grip is not tight enough to hurt, but it is firm.  
“We only get one shot at this Envy. As soon as the others find out what we're trying to pull we're dead, promised day be damned. Will these people help us?”  
Envy is still for several moments. Their eyes have drained of annoyance, leaving only a deep fatigue. A tired fear that they will, for the first time, truly loose what they have forever.  
“They'll help Lilly.”  
With a sigh and a nod Lilly releases their arm, and they continue onward.

The cold finds its way into every crevice of my coat and I hate it. No matter how many layers I try, no matter how close I pull my coat, I'm always cold in the north. I glance at Envy. Not shivering in the slightest. They are never cold and I will never stop being bitter about it. I see the village come into focus as we approach, a small group of people waiting for us outside.  
This better be worth it. This ridiculous trip in this freezing cold for the sake of Envy's crazy, stupid idea better be worth it. If these people won't help us then we are out of ideas and out of hope. We can't hide what we're doing for much longer. Being double agents, for the family and for the government, is one thing. Being triple agents, the family, the government, and ourselves is another thing entirely. We can't pull that off for much longer. Something is going to give.  
I see the scarred face of Dr. Marco as we draw closer. I remember the pictures envy showed me of what he looked like before everything. Before the family wrecked his life. I see Scar too. I try not to think about that one too much. About how different the two of us are but how easily we could have been the same. This is our very last resort.  
Our guide hails the people awaiting us, his voice fake and nervous. I don't like him. They consider him a friend and he has betrayed them so easily. True, we are not actually here to kidnap Marco, but he doesn't know that. He brought us here regardless. Maybe I'll kill him after this. People like that are dangerous.  
It doesn't take long for things to go wrong.  
“You can stop with the terrible acting Zampano, nobody's buying it”  
In an instant, a simple wave of red energy, Envy is their-self. Crop-top and all despite the cold. I lower my hood, the hairs on the back of my head bristling at the chill.  
“We came here to talk.”  
That earns me a few strange glances. Marco eyes me closely, suspicion and confusion clean on his face. I don't look like I belong side by side with Envy. I don't even look like I should know them.  
“Who are you child? Do you know that the person you stand with is a monster or do they still have you fooled?”  
Envy steps forward, a snarl on their face.  
“Listen here you old fool we came here for-”  
Before they can finish, before they can get a single step closer, the ground practically explodes, a flurry of spikes nailing them to the spot.  
“God damnit.”  
“What the hell is this?” Envy thrashes, snapping the spikes as their powers heal them in an instant. Marco starts on some long winded explanation of mines that are impossible to create using any known form of alchemy. I groan.  
“That's-stupid. You can't make alchemic mines, that's impossible. Let alone ones that only activate for humunculi, that's even stupider than the mine thing.” Marco scoffs.  
“No means that you know of perhaps. Are you humunculi really so sure of you knowledge that you can't imagine that we know things you don't?”  
“I'm not a...Whatever. Whatever; we can discuss all that later,” I step forward, my hands held open in surrender “We didn't come here to fight-”  
I barely have a moment of warning, just the energy discharge of a reaction beginning, to dodge the next round of icy spikes. I move quickly, but not quickly enough and my hand explodes into pain.  
“Fuck! Can we stop with the trying to kill us thing for a second?” My blood spotting the snow seems to be what shocks Marco enough to throw him out of the plan.  
“You're not healing? You're not one of them are you?”  
I toss my glove to the ground, examining the spot where the spike went cleanly through my hand before I reply. Envy furiously chips away at their own icy assailants.  
“No, I am not a humunculous, which kinda proves that the whole mine thing is bullshit, all things considered.”  
Marco frowns, but any rebuttal he might have is interrupted as Envy attempts to attack.  
“We'll make you listen if we have to!” The rest of their threat is cut off as a giant fist bursts from the ground in a flurry of alchemy, effectively launching them into the air. I groan.  
“Way to deescalate the situation DAD you just made things so much better in every way!” Envy takes a moment to dig themselves out of the snow drift they landed in before responding.  
“Will you shut up?”  
“I'll shut up when you stop acting like an idiot!”  
“I can still ground you!”  
“Like shit you can ground me!”  
“Excuse me?” The voice that that interrupts our argument is small and hollow, like a child speaking through a metal pipe. Hearing it from a veritable giant in a suit or armor is vaguely disturbing. I wonder where he came from and take a moment to breath before responding.  
“Yes?” The person in the armor hesitates, looking between me and Envy as he speaks.  
“You said you wanted to talk. What is this about?” I resist the urge to sigh in relief.  
“We're,” I glance over at Envy “trying to save my sister and, sort of all of Amestris by extension of that. We were hoping you could help.”  
“You-you want us to help you save your sister?” This time I do sigh, the relief I feel too much to resist.  
“Yes. Her name is Melody; and the others are after her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no proof reading we die like men. comments are my life blood. without them i simply feel like im screaming unto the void.


	3. Chapter 3

Merida loved to braid my hair, but when I cut it she taught herself to braid her own hair. She doing it now, weaving the strands together while she sits in the yard. She's not tying them off, just letting the dark locks unwind while she works on another section. She will sit and do this for hours. The yard is her favorite place for it on sunny days.  
I glance at her every once and a while, making sure she is doing ok before I turn back to my work. Its difficult to read my e-mails sometimes, simply because of how frustrating they are. Very few people e-mail a paranormal investigator with genuine cases. Mostly, the messages I get are trolls sending in “cases” about how their dick is haunted, or sending the plot summaries of various horror movies. I have gotten the entire Bee Movie script once with a short disclaimer saying they did it on a dare. I had to call Gunta and Jean-Luc in to see that one before I deleted it.  
Of the e-mail that are genuine cases, only a few of those are worth looking into. Usually they are just common occurrences meshed with extreme paranoia and ignorance. Its a rare gem whenever I get a case worth pursuing.  
It bothers me sometimes, that my profession of choice would never be able to pay the bills. Try as I might, there will never be enough cases worth following, enough people willing to pay for actual help. I should be happier that there aren't enough real problems of the supernatural sort to warrant help, but it still bothers me. Still nags. It doesn't stop me from thinking that its pointless. Every headache, every nosebleed, every night spent sleepless because someone that no-one else can hear won't stop talking. If my skills were more useful I may feel better about having them, even if they hurt at times. Something good can make a painful thing worthwhile. Maybe I should focus on the fact that bills are still getting paid.  
“Melody I swear to god if I have to dump out this coffee because you're too broody to drink it right now and you let it get cold and gross I'm moving out.” The sentence is punctuated by a gentle kick to the leg of my chair and a cup of coffee shoved into my hands. I'm shocked for a second, my mind lost in the whiplash of being brought back to reality. I sip the coffee on reflex. Its too hot and the burn wakes me up from my daze the rest of the way. I smile slightly.  
“What gave it away?”  
“Hmm?” Gunta hums, dropping herself in the wicker chair across from me. Her own coffee sloshes dangerously close to her laptop, almost splashing it before she sets it on the table.  
“What gave it away that I was brooding?”  
“You had that look,”she laughs twisting her face into an imitation of my expression “like you were a thousand miles away. Staring into hell itself.” she sips her coffee, looking over the top of her cup at the screen of her laptop. “You were either brooding or dissociating. Its the same face for both.”  
I snort into my cup, choking slightly before dissolving into laughter.  
“At least I don't look like I'm pissed whenever I'm brooding.” We're both laughing now. “You look like you're ready to kill a man whenever you start thinking too hard.”  
“I usually am!”  
Merida looks up from her braiding game, staring at us as we laugh, her own face a wide smile. She's too little to understand what we're joking about, but she likes it when we laugh. She find it very funny. I hear her own giggles from across the yard.  
It takes us a moment to calm down, but the sunlight seems brighter when we do. The air smells cleaner and I'm not as upset. The people I live with have that effect. We all have that effect on each other. The ability to pull the others out of whatever funk they have found themselves in. Its a great thing to have and a great thing to be able to do.  
I lean across the table and rustle her hair, skimming her freshly cut bangs.  
“You got bangs. You said you were going to do your hair different, but I wasn't expecting you to look like Matilda.”  
“Me neither,” she groans “I thought it would be more sexy and less,” she wriggles her fingers vaguely “middle school.”  
“It looks fine.”  
She takes a moment to work on whatever project she has going on her laptop, the sound of a few keys being hit pass through the air before she glances back up at me. Her next words are cautious.  
“You, uh, you changed your eyes.”  
My stomach twists a bit. I had wondered when they would notice. I only did it last night, standing in front of the mirror, willing my eyes to change slowly, shade by shade, to one that was old. One that was familiar. Not natural for most, but the most natural for me.  
I think Jean-Luc noticed. A quick glance over breakfast. A curios peek while he rushed out the door. He didn't say anything. Not before the day really started. He needs time to think over changes like this before asking about them. Time to process and rationalize.  
“Yeah. I changed them last night.”  
“They look nice. Are you going to stick with that look for a while? ” I smile.  
“For a bit at least. I like this color. Its. . . familiar.”  
Gunta grins.  
“Good. Purple eyes look sick as hell.”  
I laugh again. This is going to be a good day.

My finger hovers over his number. I should call him. I want to call him so badly. Its been too long. 10 months is too long to not call. To not talk. Its been 10 months since we talked. 12 months since we saw each other. 13 months since Merida saw him. Does she even remember? She's so young that ever day counts for so much in the way of memory. I hope she remembers him. I don't know how we would deal with it if she doesn't. How does one deal with a child not remembering their father?  
The radio is on in the kitchen and the music drifts out onto the back porch. Its a song I know. Some older rock song that I remember singing with my friends. Shouting at the top of our lungs while we drove home from a case. Jean-luc couldn't carry the tune to save his life, but Gunta did well enough for both of them. Its a good song, but the memories are better.  
The song is muffled, and I want to call. I don't know if I can. I don't know if he would answer. We never had a fight. Never had a reason not to call. Never a reason for me at least. Does he have a reason? Does he have a reason he hasn't called, hasn't spoken to me in all this time? I want to be angry at him. Angry that he never called. But I never called either. My eyes ache from looking at the numbers on my phone for so long. They are dry. That is why my vision is blurry. I refuse to believe that it is because of tears.

I want to call. I go to have dinner instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment please!


	4. Chapter 4

The shelter is warm enough that I don't need the outermost of my coat, and I take a moment to mourn the bloodstained cloth. That was my favorite coat, and now it is destroyed. Stained with blood and ripped from the assault of ice spikes. Unusable. A mere memory.  
“Are you crying over that coat again?”  
“It was my favorite coat!”  
“It is a damn coat!”  
“It was my coat! And don’t act like you don’t complain whenever you need to clean that dumbass trench coat you like so much.”

Envy groans, rubbing their forehead in frustration as I stick my tongue out at them, hugging my tattered treasure close to my chest. The confused souls in the rest of the room stare awkwardly at our exchange and I can’t exactly blame them. This entire situation is fairly unprecedented. But then again isn’t this entire mess unprecedented? How can we brush any part of this fucked up convoluted mess as ordinary? I sigh gently and fold the remains of my coat, laying it off to the side before turning to address the small group of people huddles around us. Envy sits cross-legged and annoyed at my side, hopefully prepared to keep their mouth shut while I explain the situation. We don’t need another fight breaking out here.

The people are a mess of confusion and distrust. Envy is confrontational and lacks the impulse control not to actively insult the people we are basically about to beg for help. Ill guilt them if I have to but I would rather it not come to that. They want her safe as much as I do.  
It’s one of the brothers, the one with actual flesh and bone, who eventually speaks up.  
“So, what does your sister have to do with any of this?”  
I pull out some bandages as he speaks, starting the task of wrapping up my injuries before answering. I loop the thin cloths carefully over the injuries the spikes inflicted while I talk.  
“My sister,” I jab a thumb at Envy, “This one’s kid, split around 15 years ago and that’s starting to become an issue for the others with how close the promise day is getting. They kinda need her back for things to go as planned.”  
Marco cringes when I mention Envy having a kid, confusion and repulsion spreading across his face. Likely picturing some awful eldritch abomination growing itself out of a philosopher’s stone in place of a normal baby; a bloody and sickening fantasy. I raise an eyebrow at him.  
“No need to look sick doctor she isn’t half bad,” I smile lightly “she certainly wasn’t a bad sister.”  
“How is that even possible?” The elder brother asks, biting at his nail in thought.  
“I thought homunculi were supposed to be infertile?” the younger brother adds, equally confused. I roll my eyes as Envy grins.  
“What’s the matter pipsqueak? Really can’t fathom me having a kid?” they shift for a moment, not even fully dropping their usual disguise to briefly tease the image of a hypermasculine caricature, some stereotypical hot fuck. I hate it when they fucking do this shit. Before they can get out their next quip, I grab my tattered coat and whack them with it, the fabric making a dramatic smack on their face.

For a moment they are still, before lashing out to drag one of my legs out from under me, sending me sprawling out on my back with a resounding crack. Stars spark briefly behind my eyes as my head hits the dusty floor as Envy snarls.  
“What crawled up your ass today dad?”  
“You are grounded.”  
“You literally can’t make me do anything.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2020 really do got me coming back to fanfics i never expected to regain motivation for don't it? i hope that the, like, two people who are subscribed to this fic enjoy getting the notification that it updated and i hope that this chapter isn't too bad. i kinda just wanted to get something out there. something a bit longer and a bit more Melody focused might be coming out soon depending on life and shit. i don't think it will be too long. its nice to be playing around with this story again :)


	5. Chapter 5

December 2, 2003.

_I should call him. I really should. Its been too long and I can’t expect him to reach out when I’m not putting in any more effort than he is. I shouldn’t at the very least, but I find it hard not to sometimes. Shouldn’t he reach out for Merida, at the very least? Even if I’m not worth it shouldn’t she be? Why would he just let himself fall away from her life? I don’t want to think about him as a deadbeat dad but he’s just not here. Is that unfair? I don’t really think I’m in any position to be making morality calls like that._

_ I wish we had never gone different ways. If we had just tried to compromise instead of splitting like we did this wouldn’t even be an issue. We wanted different thing but there wasn’t any reason we both couldn’t have made it work. It seemed logical to go different ways at the time but fuck it was pointless in retrospect. Stupid and useless. I’m talking like we’re divorced or something but that’s what it feels like sometimes._

_ I don’t even remember whose idea is was in the first place. Probably his to be honest. His idea of safety and compromise is holding people at arm’s length. Get them out of the blast zone for when things go wrong. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t called; he doesn’t want to drag us into something. Its silly though. It isn’t like I haven’t been in the blast zone before._

_ Mom would know what to do. She got people and could figure out how to talk to them so easily. She fixed so many things. She could always make thing work with people in a way I couldn’t. Even Envy might be good for some advice here. A kick in the ass to get me going at the very least. Would the two of them be proud of me and my family?_

_ I want to call him. I miss him._

The TV buzzes softly in the background of the living room, the news droning away as Merida stacks blocks on Jean-Luc’s chest. He learned a long time ago that when she wants to play her little stacking game, the one that involves breathing people and not a still floor, the best choice is to just sit still and let her go. I’m grateful for it in a silly way, forcing him to sit still for a minute rather than rushing from one thing to the next.

I tap my fingers idly on the side of my laptop, rereading the latest email for the third time through. The details line up with a background check, the wording feels genuine, the account is realistic. I smile weekly. Something like joy rises in my stomach. Something real and happy and validated. This isn’t a joke or some attention seeker. For the first time in a long time someone seems too be reaching out for genuine help.

“Jean-Luc?”

The dark haired man looks up as best he can without disturbing Merida’s impressively tall tower, but it wobbles dangerously even with his caution.

“Yes?”

“Are you busy over the next few days? Any jobs or obligations?”

He pauses for a moment, chewing his lip as he thinks through his mental calendar, a glint in his eye. Possibilities and implications. I very rarely bother him about his work, odd jobs and seasonal things that aren’t necessarily needed but fill the time as good as anything, but when I do the reason is clear; we have a case.

Eventually he grins, mismatched eyes meeting mine.

“I’m free. What have we got?”

I feel alive when I have a goal like this.

My bag is half packed, a few random articles of clothing strewn across my bed as I pause to answer a text; a short and concise thing confirming that Merida will be cared for while I’m gone, “under watchful eyes as a favor from an old friend.” I grin at the formality of the message. Her uncles never turn down a chance to spoil her for a weekend and I wouldn’t expect them to start now, even if they feel the need to make it seem like some professional arrangement.

It’s going to be a short trip, only three days, but jobs like this always are. We don’t play around with these matters, simply do what we can and leave. Pride cuts through my heart. We very rarely need more than a few days anyways. No point in staying any longer than that.

I can hear the others clattering about downstairs, arguing and bickering about what to pack and what to not, how we’re traveling and who will drive. A million menial clashes born from the buzzing excitement of something worthwhile to do; all set to the backdrop of or Merida’s footsteps as she dashes about the house, occupied with her own packing as she feeds off the joy of her little family.

She’ll be nervous tonight, like she always is when I go away for a while, and she’ll climb into bed with me instead of going to her own room. She won’t even bother asking, will simply snuggle under the quilt and cling to me through the night in preparation of my departure, taking the time to remind herself that I’m coming back. That I always come back. But for now, she’s all energy and anticipation. I catch a glimpse of her as she dashes by my room, one of her favorite dresses clasped in her hands, trailing behind her like a cape as she heads for wherever she has chosen to set up her small suitcase. 

Her excitement feeds into mine and I grin. The world feels more real now, a place I inhabit now just a muddy thing to trudge through. Mine to take not memories to relive. The colors shine brighter.

I find his contact for the first time in so very long. Too long. I should have done this sooner but now is the first time I feel capable. The first time I feel like I can bring myself to do it. I don’t compose a very long text, just something short. I just want to reach out. To make an effort.

“do you have the time to talk?”

“No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my friends are trying to get me to show them my fanfiction and the idea is physically terrifying to me


End file.
